‘You’ll be great, but only if you work your arse off’: An interview with Tony Birch

Dr Tony Birch was a guest presenter at the Darwin Writers Festival in 2016 and, along with facilitating a writing workshop for the NT Writers’ Centre, he agreed to this interview before returning to Melbourne, where he is a research fellow at Victoria University. If you’re not familiar with Birch’s work, he has published a number of books, including Shadowboxing (2006), Blood (2011) and a recent book of poetry, Broken Teeth (2016). His novel Ghost River (2015) won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous writing in 2016, and tells of a growing connection between two boys and a river, that does not solely belong to their experiences. Birch’s story takes (back) place in a setting inspired by Dight Falls in Collingwood, Victoria. The river directs themes of belonging to place beyond racial and experiential parameters.